The Planning Consultants

RFP and Selection of Consultant
In June 1999, AHCMC sent requests for proposals to seven consultants both locally and throughout the country for the preparation of a community cultural plan for Montgomery County. Three firms responded to the RFP. A selection committee composed of Board members of the Arts and Humanities Council and representatives of the County Department of Recreation, Office of Planning in the County Executive’s Office, and major cultural institutions, read each proposal and conducted interviews with the firms that appeared to be the most qualified. At the conclusion of this process, the firm of Jerry Allen and Associates of Soquel, California was selected to prepare the plan. In September 1999, a contract was signed with Jerry Allen and Associates for the preparation of the community cultural plan for Montgomery County.

Mr. Allen has been involved in the cultural and public art planning fields since 1985. During that time, he has completed major cultural plans for the City and County of Denver and the City of Los Angeles. He also has been associated with other firms in the development of cultural master plans for the Charlotte (NC) Arts and Science Council and the Broward County (FL) Division of Cultural Affairs. Mr. Allen is Director of the Office of Cultural Affairs of San Jose, California. He undertakes only a limited number of consulting assignments. For each consulting assignment, he assembles a team of consultants who are particularly suited for that project.

The RFP clearly stated that this is not to be a plan for the County government or a plan for the Arts and Humanities Council. Rather, it is a plan for the community. The planning process had to be consistent with this idea. One of the reasons stated for selecting Jerry Allen and Associates was their clear understanding of this idea and their proposal for a process that would significantly involve the community.

Consulting Team
The team of consultants Mr. Allen selected for this project reflects cultural issues that had surfaced in the county. He also set aside a portion of his budget for one or more consultants who might be needed as additional issues were identified. The consulting team selected by Mr. Allen was comprised of himself, five other consultants, and two persons responsible for two different research projects that contributed to the plan.

Michael Marsicano from The Foundation for the Carolinas in Charlotte, North Carolina, was selected to oversee the portion of the project dealing with funding and support from both public and private sectors, as well as the projections of future funding needs in the county. Margie Reese, formerly the Director of Cultural Affairs for the city of Dallas, was chosen to analyze the scope and effectiveness of existing programs, with a special emphasis on outreach to underserved communities. Steve Friedlander of Leonard

Auerbach and Associates, a cultural facilities planning and design firm, was given the role of reviewing existing and planned cultural facilities and providing recommendations regarding future facilities. Marete Wester who is with the Alliance for Arts Education/New Jersey, joined the consulting team to examine the issue of arts in education. James Smith, a widely-recognized humanities expert, was added to the team to review current humanities offerings in the county and make recommendations on how to strengthen the humanities.

Dr. Stefan Toepler, Associate Research Scientist on the faculty of the Institute for Policy Studies at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, was responsible for overseeing the research for and writing the report “The Arts and Humanities in Montgomery County: An Empirical Profile.” Randy Cohen, Vice President for Research and Information at Americans for the Arts in Washington, DC, was responsible for conducting the research for and preparing the report titled “A Comparison of the Montgomery County Arts Council and 9 County Arts Councils.” (Detailed information about the consultant team is included in Appendix B.)

Community Input

Steering Committee
To ensure continuing community participation in this planning process, the AHCMC appointed a Cultural Plan Steering Committee. (See list of Steering Committee members in the Acknowledgements on pages iii-iv.) Wendy Susswein, then President of the Arts and Humanities Council, and Larry Pignone, Executive Director of Montgomery United Way, served as co-chairs of the committee. The committee consisted of representatives of arts and humanities organizations of varying sizes, county and city governments, Montgomery County Public Schools, businesses and community groups, and individual artists and scholars. The role of the Steering Committee was to identify critical issues to be addressed in the plan, to provide feedback to the consultants as they gathered data and began to draw conclusions, and to review and reach agreement on the final recommendations.

Critical Issues
At their first meeting, the Steering Committee was lead by Jerry Allen and Margie Reese through a structured exercise to identify and prioritize issues of concern that would become the focus of the plan. They identified eight critical issues:

• Funding and sustainability
  
• Cultural facilities development
  
• Arts education and future audiences
  
• Ethnic diversity
  
• Transportation and access
  
• Marketing and visibility
  
• Heritage and preservation
  
• Support for individual artists and humanities scholars

The Development of the Plan
Each of the consultants made several trips to Montgomery County. During these visits, they received community comments at a public forum, conducted numerous interviews and heard from several focus groups. These activities resulted in more than 200 people becoming contributors to the plan’s content. (A list of the participants is included as Appendix C.)

A public forum on the arts and humanities was held on December 2, 1999 at the Executive Office Building in Rockville. Members of the community were invited to speak to the consultants about issues they believed would affect the future of the arts and humanities in the county. More than 60 people attended and more than 20 people expressed their views at this forum.

The consultants then conducted interviews with local elected officials, government staff, representatives of arts and humanities organizations, and representatives of community- and faith-based groups. Interviews were not limited to those with background or specific knowledge of the arts. The consultants also sought those who could provide a sense of the character of Montgomery County, both its strengths and its weaknesses. An unintended but valuable outcome of the interview process was that the consultants became familiar with the geography of the county and the traffic congestion that impacts the lives of all county residents.

Over the course of the process, the consultants also conducted a series of focus groups to elicit information on specific areas of interest. Focus groups were conducted with business representatives, arts educators, individual artists, large arts organizations, and small and mid-sized emerging arts organizations. In addition to this local information-gathering process, the consultants conducted research on past trends in the county and on best practices in other regions of the country. All of this information was used in the preparation of this plan.

Draft Recommendations for the Cultural Plan
On March 15, 2000, Jerry Allen and Associates presented the Draft Recommendations for the Cultural Plan for Montgomery County to the Arts and Humanities Council. This document contained more than 50 recommendations related to the future of the arts and humanities in the county along with a matrix of costs associated with implementing the recommendations. The Draft was presented to the County Executive and the County Council.

The Draft then was presented to the community along with an invitation to participate in a series of six community forums intended to solicit reaction to and comments on the recommendations. There was considerable attention in the local news media about the Draft in general and some of the recommendations in particular that elicited strong
viewpoints. This discussion helped to generate participation in the community forums held during April and May 2000 in Olney, Bethesda, Silver Spring, Germantown, eastern Montgomery County, and Rockville. Also, comments were received by mail and e-mail from interested residents. A compilation of comments received was shared with the Steering Committee who then worked on modifying the recommendations to reflect this input.